


A thousand heartbeats at once

by MirandaHamilton



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Talking, brief section with internalized homophobia, but just fluff otherwise, laying in bed, they have their own little fluff universe where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts, tooth rotting fluff probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirandaHamilton/pseuds/MirandaHamilton
Summary: Set in London in 1705 during the good times, some domestic scene sketches that involve a lot of laying in bed and talking and kissing and books and love declarations, fluff of a high order
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	A thousand heartbeats at once

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosalind_in_Arden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosalind_in_Arden/gifts).



“Do you want to know what it felt like?”

“What?”

“The first time I saw you?”

“What, when I introduced myself to you?”

“The very day.”

“I suppose if it is favorable to me, I could stand to hear it.”

Thomas laughs softly, shifts in the bed, uses the plentiful sunlight to find James’s cheekbone, to trace it down to his jaw. The light casts a beautiful bright red shimmer on James’s hair and Thomas drinks in the sight. He lays his head back on the pillow, crisscrossing his legs among James’s underneath the blanket. “It felt like the air had fists that were beating against my chest. That the impact was vibrating right through my ribs and into all of my heart chambers. Not an angry raging, no. The kind that a storm has, I suppose, a kind it can’t help but have as it splits the skies because it is simply too big for Heaven to hold. I was certain I could hear the echoes inside myself. And then there was the hammering, like an instrument striking an anvil over and over and over. And because of you, I didn’t have a single heartbeat anymore, but a thousand at once.

“And I didn’t think you thought much of me. I had decided to ask beforehand whether your devotion to the pirate problem would conflict with your ambition. And it was difficult to say those words to you once I’d seen you. You gave nothing but the sense of, ‘ _I can do this work. Trust me._ ’ So straight-backed, upright, and never not meeting my eyes. My school friends told me about you, but they neglected to warn me.” He smiles. “They said you had a great mind. They never told me that you would scramble mine. And then when I’d attached the pieces back together, they’d give me new thoughts.”

“What kind of thoughts?”

“Thoughts that you were never absent from.”

James’s voice is soft but with a rasp in it. “It’s difficult to believe I could inspire such a feeling. In anyone, never mind you.”

“Me?”

“The best man I know.”

He’s quiet for a time after that, and Thomas lets James’s words repeat in circle in his mind. He loves James’s voice – a unique interweaving of a rough bit of sand with the smoothness of polished wood. Loves every plane of his face, his eyes, his hands, the curve of his back. Everything, everything, everything, heart body mind soul. This magnificent man who somehow loves him back, wants to spend all the time it takes to hear Thomas’s every breath.

When James speaks again, his voice is low but fervent. "I wish I had a story like yours. That I could tell you that I found you immediately striking when I first saw you. How as time went on, I had seen you as more than someone I admired. It took me a very long time to understand that I had this capacity inside myself. The capacity of love for you. I didn’t feel it fully until you kissed me. I’m not after pity. I never am. But I’m sorry it took me so long. I would make it up to you. And I know what you’d say.” He raises a hand as Thomas opens his mouth. “You’d say that I don’t need to make it up to you. Not out of pity, but out of your pure heart that can only ever stand to embrace the truth. And then gift it back to the world. To me.”

Thomas feels an ache spread throughout his chest, feels his breastbone almost pulse with it. He has treasured how more and more openly James has spoken to him over the weeks. At the beginning, he said little, only touched Thomas to convey his feelings, listened to him read out loud and exchanged smiles for the words. Thomas would not have loved him any less. But these days he builds whole houses within himself from the little speeches James offers him. The words, and the voice that speak them, have laid foundations that support the loveliest shelter he can retreat into when he and James are apart. And when they’re together, he keeps the door of the house open, ready to receive more words, and James continues to build it higher, to light a fire in its hearth.

Thomas laces their fingers together. “Then I won’t say any of those things. Only that I don’t care that you did not immediately felt what I did. Sometimes I doubted if I should ever tell you of my feelings. It would have complicated everything – our work, our partnership, our friendship. The idea of losing you as a friend was unspeakably terrifying. But you deserved the truth. I dragged my feet telling you. I wish I hadn’t.”

James shakes his head. “What an enormous thing to tell someone. To tell another man. Who could lay blame? I can’t, and I don’t.”

Thomas brings their laced hands to his lips. “The only logic I ever want to hear is yours.”

“I suppose I’ll stay around, then.”

Thomas laughs and James traces his fingers down his bare arm. Thomas shivers. James looks at him with a sort of wonder, eyes glassy, but he smiles and traces his fingers back up. “Even now. A small storm to shake you.”

Thomas bumps his nose against James’s. “Cheeky.”

“Indeed. Would you have it otherwise?”

“I would not be _wise_ at all. I wouldn’t think. I would only _do_.” He takes James by the shoulder blades and pulls him on top of himself, guiding James’s head into the crook of his neck. He is addicted to neck kisses. He hopes that James has no cure.

***

Thomas remembers the day in the study, what he now thinks of as “the book day.” He had tried to strike up what he hoped would be a casual conversation while they were taking a tea break from working on the pirate problem. “What is something you like?”

James had eyed Thomas over the rim of his teacup. “Something I like?”

“Yes. It can be anything.”

“For example?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Simple things. A strong cup of tea like you’re drinking. A brisk afternoon walk.”

James had looked amused, his eyes slightly crinkled. “Yes, I do like those things.”

Thomas had forced himself not to lean forward. “And what else?”

James had tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Well. I suppose I could say that I like writing very much. Not any original works, unfortunately, I haven’t the mind for that. But drafting and preparing briefings. I enjoy it. I feel accomplished, even if the words are prosaic and not poetic. What I truly enjoy, though, is writing notes in the margins of books. Not criticism, necessarily. But whatever thoughts come to me, be they analytical or reflective.”

Thomas had said nothing, had waited with breath held for James to continue. James seemed to have misinterpreted his silence. “I know many wouldn’t approve of such actions,” he had said hastily, but Thomas had waved a hand at him.

“I cast no judgment. In fact, I am rather charmed at the idea of having a dialogue with a text, or using it as a place for rumination.”

James had blessed him with another smile. “Yes. That’s it precisely. And if I give a book as a gift, I tend to inscribe it with a comment on the blank page at the front. A personal greeting, perhaps. I don’t have the opportunity to do this often, as I don’t have many…” He hadn’t completed the thought, had cleared his throat. “When I am able, I like to do it. It makes the book feel even more like a gift.”

Thomas had gestured at the wall of books across from them. “You are more than welcome to borrow from our library and write on any pages you wish.”

James’s cheeks had colored slightly. “They are your family’s books. I couldn’t possibly.”

Thomas had been the one to smile now. “If you are worried about my father finding out, let me assure you, that bookcase is pure decoration to him. It makes him feel respectable to have a grand bookcase ‘like every civilized man should.’ If you choose to inscribe any of them, he will never know. And I would enjoy any comments you made very much.” He had cut himself off, not trusting himself to neutrally continue with, _And I would dearly like to know what note at the beginning you would dedicate to me._

James had gazed at the bookcase. “I will possibly take you up on the offer.” He had then turned his gaze from the books to Thomas’s eyes. “I don’t know if you were wondering, but my fascination with books likely stems from the fact I had little access to them as a boy. What I could get my hands on, I devoured. It is a miracle that I know how to read at all, given the scant education I received. So books became precious to me. And what is precious to me tends to remain so forever.” There had been a twitch in his jaw as he said it, and Thomas could almost feel a phantom echo in his own jaw. James had looked once more at the case and then back to Thomas. “Does that in some part answer your question of what I like?”

“Yes.” Thomas had felt as though James had already inscribed a book to him, one called _honesty._ Though it existed only in his mind, he had felt like he could have turned the pages and felt privileged to read James’s script scrawling out a story just for him. “When Yule arrives, I shall know what to gift you with. Although I don’t yet know the title or inscription, but I hope they will be enjoyable.”

James’s mouth had curved up and he had bowed his head slightly. “I wouldn’t expect or require a gift from you.”

“I would insist upon it. You could not prevent me.”  
James’s face had remained amused and, dare Thomas think it, pleased?

The next question Thomas had asked was reckless. It should truly not have been asked in polite company. But he had been with a friend, and friends can speak plainly, can they not, and with emotion?

He had taken a breath. “Do you recognize that the passion you possess is a

virtue?”

James had raised his eyebrows, but his eyes had connected with Thomas’s, held them through the few beats before he spoke. “No. I had never considered it. No one has ever said anything of the like to me.”

“They should have. I have met my fair share of ambitious men. Ambition does not equal passion, however. Its byproducts can be determination and fortitude but an inconsequential view towards strong feelings, especially of joy. Seeing that joy in you is refreshing. Thank you for telling me.”

James had shrugged briefly, cheeks still slightly flushed at the edges. “I merely answered the question you asked.”

The words had tumbled from Thomas, unstoppable. “And proved in spades that your passion makes you a rare find. And one to be valued. And truly, treasured among all men.”

***

Among all men, Thomas’s spirit chose James, and he has never regretted it, not even on that first night when he gave James the biggest shock of his life.

James was hesitant the first time they kissed, holding his head completely still and only moving his mouth against Thomas’s when Thomas moved his first. He had been slow to bring his arms up around Thomas’s back and hold him. Thomas had wondered if it was too soon for kisses, if it was better that they talked first.

“You don’t have to do this,” he’d said softly when they were alone in the bedroom. “You don’t have to be with me if you don’t truly want to be. I would never ask that of you. You said I was a good man. I hope that I am one in this case.”

“You are.”

“You will leave, then?”

“No.” James had run a hand over the blanket between them. “I’m only reeling, still.” He had stopped his hand and looked up at Thomas. Always meeting his gaze, even now. “Will you only just…” He had swallowed even as he hadn’t broken his eyes away.

Thomas had nodded. “Yes. Whatever you ask.”

James had nodded back, decision slowly but surely rising in his eyes. “Hold me again. Please.”

So Thomas had wrapped his arms gently around James. To his shock, James had gripped him fiercely, stuttering both of their breaths a little, but Thomas hadn’t leaned away. He’d lost sense of time, of how long they simply existed in each other’s embrace, no words spoken, holding being its own language.

The first time James had moved to kiss him came the next morning. They had curled into bed together that night, not removing any of their clothes. Thomas had laid with his chest against James’s back and wrapped one arm over him. James had touched their fingertips together for a few moments, and then laced their fingers together. In the morning, he had rolled to face Thomas. Thomas had smiled at him, mouthed _Good morning_ , and James had touched Thomas’s face. He had run his fingers along the line of Thomas’s forehead, traced one fingertip down his nose, palmed his cheek, taken his chin between two fingers.

“I’m exploring,” he’d whispered. “I’ve never touched another man.”

Thomas had taken James’s other hand and pressed it against his heart. “Take all the time in the world.”

So Thomas had closed his eyes and his heart had thrummed sweetly as James touched his face, his neck, his shoulder, his arm, his chest. When he had sensed James’s face close to his own, he had opened his eyes.

“Kissing. I want to try.” He had moved his mouth closer to Thomas’s. “Will you tell me something like, ‘There’s no wrong way?’”

“Yes,” Thomas had breathed.

“And I don’t have to think very much.”

“Not at all.”

“I should do what feels right.”

“Always.”

“Then you’ve been my teacher. Let us see what kind of a student I am.” And he had pressed his lips against Thomas’s and Thomas never did answer what kind of student James was, he had forgotten by the time both their mouths were red and they had to break apart. And had laughed.

They kissed as night fell, and Thomas had decided that every kiss becomes a star, each shaped like the image of the two men’s mouths together. For all the stars the fell and shot and disappeared, another must take its place. Their galaxy of kisses would replace the lost ones, and one day the night would be so full of kisses that it would outshine the sun. And the only darkness the two men would ever know again would be when they snuffed out the candles at bedtime so that they would have to find each other with only whispers and caresses. Beauty doesn’t need to be seen to be felt.

***

James has had many energies over the time Thomas has known him. Contemplative. Fervent. His head bowed over papers but talking steadily as he circles and underlines paragraphs. Even simply sitting back in a chair in Thomas’s study, the strong sense of purpose and wisdom rolling off him like a breeze. At the hanging, he did not flinch, did not blink. He was prosaic and pragmatic and precise in his speech and actions. All business. Uncrackable.

When James is assigned to go to sea again, they lay in bed and Thomas writes farewell missives to him by tracing each letter of every word with his fingertip onto James’s bare back. James has his head buried in his arms. His energy now is subdued and there is a tenseness in his shoulders. Thomas gives up his writing and gently kneads them. “Every day you are gone is one day closer to when we’ll be together again.”

James sighs into his crossed arms. “I used to see beauty in what I considered the proper order of things. My uniform arranged correctly, my cabin spotless, all business with others executed swiftly, neatly. Success. The one thing I needed to constantly strive for if I were to climb just half an inch higher in life. Essentially, I suppose, the most beautiful thing to me was perfection. I believed it, so I acted upon it. And now I must do so again tomorrow.”

James rolls onto his back and Thomas leans his head on his shoulder. James brings his arm up and strokes Thomas’s hair. “It will be surreal. Being on board again and acting like I have always done these past years. I can do it, of course. Part of my success has been my ability to act. To play a well-mannered gentleman who always has the right words, the right way to flatter to my superiors, the subtle way to compliment without seeming desperate for crumbs thrown to me. I’d still be with scant money if I didn’t treat the ladder of success as a stage. I trained myself to jump over any hurdle if it meant I created one more social tie, one more good reference for a future position. But you have torn apart the stage I used to play on. You’ve shredded the script that I have gripped so tightly. And leaving you won’t only mean being apart from you. It will mean having to nail the stage back together, to write the script onto fresh pages. And the thought exhausts me to the bones.” He lays their foreheads together. “There’s a place in the small of my back where I feel all those supposedly grand, important men have adhered an invisible rope. And they’re tugging on it, trying to pull me back to the way I lived my life before I met you.”

Thomas finds the small of James’s back and lays his palm across it. The energy around James is becoming fearful and Thomas can almost feel James’s nerves jangle beneath his skin. He’s felt James’s hesitancy before, his cautiousness when they first began their world together, but he’s never seen him truly frayed like this. He feels a raw pain, like a freshly snapped tendon, and heat churns in his stomach. Everything has been rapturous lately, and a puncture in the cloth of that feeling needs mending as soon as possible.

“Listen to me,” he says, voice firm. “When you’re with those men, or when you’re alone, remember what we do together in this bed. Touch. Talk. Rest. Remember how it makes you feel. How does it make you feel?”

James blinks his eyes a few times but he keeps them in line with Thomas’s. “Like ecstasy and safety.”

“There you go, then. Those feelings can be your guiding star back to me.”

James squeezes his eyes shut. He’s not crying, not exactly, but he rubs at his eyes anyway. “I sometimes wonder, how are you of this world? The more I know you, the more you seem to come from some other realm where the laws of men don’t even exist, never mind apply.”

Thomas laughs softly and shakes his head. “I’ve obeyed many, _many_ laws in my time. I didn’t start breaking them until I met you.”

***

There is no such thing as “love at first sight.”

There is admiration, respect, and a wish to know someone better.

That is all.

That is decidedly not all.

His entire life, Thomas had been taught that the world revolved ceaselessly in a certain direction, that it abided by laws set in a medium stronger than stone, that its customs and dictates are flawless and so high above judgment that judgment may as well not even exist. This is life. Live it thus.

Thomas had sat alone in his study one night a few weeks after he had met James, only one candle burning. He painted phantom images: James sitting in the chair in front of the desk, standing against the bookcase, hovering in the doorway, either entering or leaving. Most preferably entering.

It was always preferable to be with him than without him.

That was such a simple thought that it had been almost overwhelming. Are not complicated thoughts the ones which are meant to overwhelm? But the simplicity of the situation was what had grabbed him and shaken free the bars he had nailed over his true feelings.

His true feelings had flooded his mind, heart, spirit, whole existence. When he thought of James, he could not breathe, he was so stricken with longing.

His universe had narrowed to the knowledge that he was desperately in love, and had been at first sight, no matter that others did not believe this was possible.

Others.

The word had stirred a memory and he had reached for _Meditations_ , which was never far from his hand on his desk. He had paged through it and held the candle near the place he had found, illuminating it.

_“I am constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self...how much credence we give to the opinions our peers have of us and how little to our very own!”_

***

“I would read that quote every day that I saw you after that. It gave me sustenance. It, and therefore you, helped pry the whip from my hand and soothe the scars I had inflicted upon the core of myself. That wasn’t easy. I’d been holding that whip for a very long time. Since I was a boy, and attended my first salon, and saw a handsome man whom I wanted nothing more than to touch. The whip – it was molded to fit my hand, to make it easy to thrash every wrong and twisted part of myself. It was the law. And then I met you, and I realized I deserved to lay down my burden. It doesn’t matter if you are the only one who knows I have done so. We both know, and that heals me.”

James closes his eyes and says nothing for a time. Thomas finally leans up on his elbow and strokes his fingers through James’s hair. “What are you thinking?”

James leans into Thomas’s touch but doesn’t open his eyes. “I think how different our lives were. I had no notion this desire existed in me until you appeared. I think of how I was spared a torture you were not.”

Thomas pulls his elbow down and rolls to cup James’s face in both hands. “Don’t feel guilty. Do not ever feel guilty. Your path may have been different but I am not superior to you. There is no contest of suffering. I need you to believe that.”

James looks up at him, eyes cloudy. “So much pain.”

Thomas presses their foreheads together. “It’s gone. I met you, and I woke up, and I’ll never sleep in sorrow again.”

James continues to gaze at him, but when he closes his eyes this time, it’s precisely at the moment when his lips meet Thomas’s and they kiss until they can’t breathe. Then they catch their breaths, and kiss again.

***

Thomas reads to James every day. James listens in silence until Thomas is finished. Then they talk about the book, the possible meanings of certain passages, any particularly nice turns of phrase. Sometimes Thomas will pass the book off to James, who will make notes in it and then hand it back to him. Sometime the notes are incisive and analytical. Sometimes they’re jokes that only Thomas would understand, and Thomas simply laughs while he holds the book open while the ink dries. When he closes the book, he’ll toss it on the nightstand and push James back on the bed. They can spend quite literally hours in bed. There is no such thing as too much of one’s hand on the back of the other’s neck, or feet overlapping, or kisses on shoulders, collarbones, spines, anywhere.

They tell each other their dreams in the mornings. They stand at the windowsill and watch the sun rise and set. When they have to work, they glance at each other as frequently as possible, until sometimes tea breaks involve locking the study door and neglecting the tea and one of them laying back in a chair while the other straddles his lap and they move however they want and that is the most accomplished work of the day. When they do actually sit with their tea, they talk about what they could do if they had all the time in the world and any means possible. Sail across to France or Italy, walk the streets, browse the museums, go to concert halls. An adventure.

In the end, when they go back to bed, they are content with their life because if they have each other, they have the true stuff of dreams. And since that stuff is the reality of their togetherness, they are grateful.

Each time they mark the date of another month together, they put their arms around each other’s necks and waists and sway together around in a circle. Neither of them has the slightest idea if it qualifies as actual dancing. But it becomes a ritual, and with their heads on each other’s shoulders, they simply move. It’s a lovely prelude to climbing back into bed.

They joke that the bed is a shrine. It is, though. It is.

***

Thomas rests his chin on James’s shoulder the morning James has to leave for sea. He watches as James touches the inscription on the frontispiece of _Meditations_ that Thomas had written not five minutes prior. They had said their goodbyes the night before because James had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to speak coherently in the morning. He surprises Thomas with his speech.

“I know what I want, Thomas. I want a full communion with you. I want your hands in my own but I also want to take any aches or pains you’ve ever felt in your spirit and nurse them with the hands of my own spirit. Those hands that don’t take the form of my physical ones, but are shaped to hold fast and true to the soul of the man I love. To wrap you up in whatever will give you the greatest joy, with my prayer being that I am the one man who can provide you with such happiness. That you would consider me your blessing. I want to nourish you. I want to know that you know I want to do this. And I want you to never want me to stop. Doing right by you is the only law I’ll ever want to obey.”

“I know.” Thomas lets his tear slide down his face and hit the bed sheet. “I never want you to stop.” Hearing James’s words is like seeing all the colors in the world for the first time when Thomas has forgotten half of them. He sees the whole luminous spectrum now and marvels at it, and the infinite prisms sing melodies in his blood. James’s voice, always.

They don’t have time, James has to leave, but they shed half their clothes and roll around in the bed anyway. After the last kiss, their tears smearing on each other’s faces, James is finally out of the door and Thomas is alone. He sleeps on James’s side of the bed for the rest of James’s absence. When James returns, Thomas jokes with him that James has to do right by him and let him keep that side of the bed from now on, and James affects mock indignation and then lets Thomas do all the things he wants with him in the bed. When James finds him more than a decade later, once they’re out of the sun of the field, Thomas says he only hopes James is happy to be with him again, and James holds Thomas as he collapses to his knees and says that the thousand heartbeats he’s feeling at once each have an inscription of love that he’s written on them, and he doesn’t want to wait until they’re in bed to read them out. There’s no time to waste, and each dedication James recites to Thomas fills the world with more grace than it has ever known. They bless it, and each other, again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a heretic who slightly altered the punctuation of the quote from Meditations which is from its wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
> 
> Dedicated to Rosalind_in_Arden in appreciation of re-introducing me to the show after a long hiatus, listening to me babble for hours about my Feelings regarding these two and the show in general, and just for being a friend, thank youuu <3


End file.
